


Slow Burn

by LadyAly



Category: Supernatural
Genre: And his whiskey, Gen, I'm going to warn for Alcoholism, Just an introspective piece on Crowley
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-01
Updated: 2014-05-01
Packaged: 2018-01-21 12:24:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 873
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1550342
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyAly/pseuds/LadyAly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Whiskey is a slow burning poison, and Crowley's is centuries long.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Slow Burn

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this a while ago, while I was taking a psych class. Crowley, big bad King of Hell, is never sober. Why?
> 
> So I wrote this, using the 'accepted' backstory of Crowley as Fergus.

Crowley had the same routine day in and day out. At eight in morning, right on the dot of course, he would rise from the mess of silk sheets and plush blankets. Each and every morning he would rummage through his wardrobe, looking for a suit to wear. Crowley, the classy man that he was, always wore a suit. Smooth and dark, with leather shoes and a silken tie.

And every morning, he'd have coffee that was more whiskey than anything else. There he would sit, bathed in false sunlight. They didn't have actual sunlight in Hell, as it was what the name implied. The demon would have a report in hand and hold up the illusion he wasn't downing a good amount of whiskey before many even rose from the clutches of slumber and dreams.

The whiskey is always gone before he even knew it and something deep down told him to drink more. But he's got a job to do and a meeting to get to. Like every morning, he left the empty cup on the table and was inside before anyone knew he was even gone.

Like clockwork, the meetings are done by noon and it'd be time to start drinking the pure substance. For the rest of the day, he had a glass in hand. To an observer, it may have seemed like he had been nursing the same glass all day. But in reality, he'd already had more glasses than he cared to count.

The whiskey had always been in his life, even when he wasn't a demon. Long ago, too long for Crowley to properly remember, he'd been a tailor with a taste for spirits. His poison of choice had always been, and always would be, whiskey. At the end of the day, before he would go home, the then Fergus would nurse a few glasses of expensive liquor and be on his way home to a house filled with ghosts and a boy he'd abandoned to the world. Some nights, the pathetic Scot would stare at a painting on the wall and mourn the night away. And others, he would simply sit in silence, beside the boy he'd made colder than ice.

The drink had been what had ultimately led him to selling his soul. In a book he'd read in his mother's library, he'd read of demons and deals. On a night when he'd drank in a large amount, he walked two miles out of town and to a dirt crossroads.

He'd screamed and raged, ranting to Heaven and Hell of the injustices of the world. It was then a woman appeared to him. Hair like the sun and skin like snow, with _eyes like fire_ and a mouth full of teeth to devour his soul. Bleary and drunk off his hate and whiskey, he'd demanded the first thing he could think of. An extra three inches below the belt and his life was cut to ten short years.

He still remembered her laughter. Like church bells ringing at a funeral. Somber and long and more _beautiful_ than he could have ever imagined. To seal the deal, she'd kissed him. It was cold and hot all at the same time. Searing his soul and writing in his flesh. In that moment, he felt empty. Like all he was had been taken and locked away in a chest, to be sealed away for all of time. It was many years before he'd realized she'd stolen more than a kiss.

It was ten years later, when he saw her again. Still as beautiful and accompanied by the snarls and howls of hounds. Huge and black, they stood before him, all muscle, teeth, and malcontent. All it took was a whistle and he knew no more than the darkness of a whiskey lullaby.

Crowley lurched back into the present, the grip on his crystal glass nearly enough to shatter it. No longer was he in a shack with little more than dirt floors. No, he was in a palace that he never could have imagined as Fergus, the pathetic drunk that'd sold his soul in a moment of drunken bitterness.

Often he wondered if it was a terrible thing that he hadn't had a sober day in nearly two centuries. Though, as the amber liquor reflected in the firelight, he didn't see why the spirit was so bad for the soul.

Whiskey was like a slow burning flame. Warm and deadly, and given long enough, destroyed a man until he was nothing for than charred framework and ashes.  
That was what Crowley was. Crowley was King of Hell, the demon who'd changed and taken all. Rebuilt from ashes and framework wounded by drink.  
And yet that'd always be all he'd ever be.

Warm embers and ashes on the wind, the scent of a slow burning fire still twisting through his essence.

Crowley drank whiskey at every moment, because he was unsure of what would happen when the ashes grew cold and the fire stopped burning. And what would he be then?

Would he only be the charred, ashen framework of the pathetic, drunken tailor named Fergus?

Or would he still be a King of a slow burning kingdom?


End file.
